In accordance to the FTC guidelines, I must state that I make no monetary gains from my reviews or endorsements here on Confessions of a Literary Persuasion. All books I review are either borrowed, purchased by me, given as a gift, won, or received in exchange for my honest review of the book in question.

04 August, 2016

Book Review: The Memory of Lemon by Judith Fertig

Title: The Memory of Lemon
Author: Jedith Fertig
Publisher: Berkley Books
Publish Date: 12 July 2016

The Memory of Lemon picks up where The Cake Therapist leaves off. Claire "Neely" Davis is still living in her hometown of Millcreek Valley and running a bakery that specializes in custom wedding cakes.  Claire has a gift. She is able to "taste" people's emotions and use them to create custom flavor combinations that resonate with her clients.  The success of her bakery is due to her talent, and it hasn't failed her yet. That is until she meets a mother of the bride who disagrees with everything her daughter wants in a wedding. 

Neely needs the successful cake that her intuition should be helping to create. However she is facing her own struggles. A divorce from a well known football star, the threat of a prenuptial contract clause signed when she was young and naive, and the need to explore a new romantic relationship topped with reconnecting with a long absent father leave her in her own inner turmoil which may be why her flavor intuition is not working correctly. 

As Neely works with the young bride, she starts to uncover links between the bride's family history and her own. The events of these family stories both pleasant and unpleasant combine together to create delicious memories. Aided but hear memories Neely and her friends in the wedding planning industry of Millcreek Valley are able to create a classy wedding that meets both the needs of the bride and her mother. The process also helps Neely to overcome the turmoil in her life one hurdle at a time. 

I have been waiting for this book to come out since last summer. I made the mistake of reading the excerpt of The Memory of Lemon that the publisher included at the end of The Cake Therapist and was very sad when I found out that it had not been  published yet.  I loved that this book picked up immediately after the events of The Cake Therapist and expands on the story started in the first book.  The book resonated with me strongly in the part of the story that focused on the budding relationship between Neely and the father who abandoned her as a child. The investigation of why her father left and how it felt for both of them was poignant and left me feeling "all the feels" as it resonated with my own relationship with my father. 

I also really enjoyed that this book kept the back and forth storytelling between the present and the past. I had a little bit of trouble at first keeping the connections between the two families history apart. But they came together in a satisfying manner.  The Memory of Lemon is a heartwarming, and entertaining read for the summer. 

No comments: